John Paddington

The UK is weird freaky bigoted outlier

Maybe it'll be a niche group but there's now a likelihood of British Citizens abroad being able to vote in elections but not enter the country?

This is very good and following the advice here would be an excellent way of resetting the approach to date and proving the Labour party the progressive party it should be.

Glad it's opening. Frequency isn't great. Especially only hourly on Sundays. Need to get the "West Chord" and HS2 finished so we can increase local capacity.

Also: looks like 2 to 3 minutes interchange time at Kings Norton for Cross City Trains from the South.

child on ipad with headphones: maybe we should stop worrying about the screens kids are on adult driving looking at phone AND START WORRYING ABOUT THE SCREENS ADULTS ARE ON One thing leads to another.

Screen Time.

I'm from Birmingham so we're still waiting for the resurrection of the recycling collection.

People seem far more fascinated by imaginary babies than thinking about how to improve the lives of the eight billion people already living.

It's a start but actually they should just ban political donations, because either:
1. They influence politicians (so it's corruption)
2. They don't influence, so it's taking money out of the company for no reason and taking away funds for more useful activities like company investment or wages.

The correlation between motoring and other types of offence - PubMed This paper examines the link between traffic offences and criminal offences in Great Britain statistically by linking offence data from two national sources: the Driving and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) and the Home Office. A stratified sample of over 52,000 drivers was selected from DVLA records …

Wouldn't be politically popular but there's strong suggestions of those committing motoring crime committing other offences
pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/16978575/

I had 2300 per lane per hour in my head but that was from working on the controlled motorways business case and just realised that was about 20 years ago!

Maybe ignore the gossip until it happens and see what is going on in Parliament. Just looked on the House of Commons website and there's motions on local government and police funding. Tomorrow on mobile phone connectivity in rural areas. These seem like issues that might be important.

Ignoring the big question of the AVs being technology ready, the real question is value chain. Will Uber own and operate AVs? (Which I guess with those numbers, I assume it will)

But if they start owning AVs, will human drivers want to stay on the platform?

Britain’s building standards are now so bad, even the super-rich are facing housing misery | Phineas Harper Residents of the UK’s most expensive flats have won a court case over defective pipework. If their homes are shoddily built, what hope do the rest of us have, asks writer and curator Phineas Harper

Good article but it's not really standards that are the problem it's building control, warranties and the only real way to pursue defects is through expensive and risky legal action.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Fully agree - the media cover politics like it's football or reality tv. What is really frustrating is how little draft legislation, amendments get covered and their impact on people's lives.

…as per my skeet from earlier today, here’s a reminder that the original intention of the UK’s “age appropriate” legislative push (AADC & OSA) was to circumvent US §230 and regulate content, not regulate design features.

In my area of work - railway policy - a reform of rail ticketing will be proposed by the Commission this spring

The draft is going to be good

If this reform happened, it'd mean more rail tickets sold and a boost to the sector

The danger?

National rail firms bend governments' ears, water it down

This is on my list for one day

"As a parent, I am deeply concerned about what my child is accessing online. Albeit not enough to check or to install some very basic software that would prevent them from accessing dodgy material online. That's why the Online Safety Act is so important."

A good test would be to propose to reopen it to vehicles but any private vehicle has to pay a toll.

If they're not willing to pay a toll then it's not important enough to reopen.

Photo of Paddington and Travel Basil teddy bears on an empty underground train coach

Underground selfie on way to St Pancras. Getting the train from Hammersmith so it's empty here. I wonder how quickly it'll fill up.

Cities are no longer just testing mobility innovation, they’re shaping Europe’s deployment agenda.

📅 11 Feb 2026 | 14:00–15:00 CET
Join CitiesFirst + ERTICO for a live webinar on moving from pilots to city-scale impact

🔗https://www.linkedin.com/events/7424690989308735489

#CitiesFirst #ITSIstanbul

It's finally happened! The Sofia to Istanbul (or Dimitrovgrad to Istanbul, if coming from Bucharest) sleeper train is finally bookable online, at the Turkish Railways website! 🥳

"That's not an Executive Summary, that's an Introduction..."

The combined right bloc vote is still 2/3rds of what it was in 1997 among 18-25 year olds, never mind 2010.

Origin story for a British / Irish version of Snowpiercer for when the gulf stream gets diverted.

I think the mostly humbling and salient truth I was ever given about working in television is “Remember, we’re here to sell bleach first.”

Parliament revamp could cost £40bn and take 61 years MPs and peers are presented with two renovation options and told to make a decision by the mid-2030s.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

At which point do we just decide we need a new parliament building?

Maybe we could have a chamber that encourages adult political discourse instead of the hoo yah nonsense the adversarial layout promotes? Provide accommodation for MPs?

Victorian theme park...

I had one in end of last year. I really struggled with it for that reason. I managed to get them to tell me how long each mini scan would be which helped a lot.

UK’s £8bn research fund faces “hard decisions” as it pauses new grants UKRI boss Ian Chapman said it had been told by the government to

Just catching up on the situation with UKRI and I can’t claim much expertise, but worth saying:
1. Research funding is pretty crucial when you’re a knowledge-based economy like the UK is
2. Blanket pauses in funding can be very damaging

www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Good article but really the biggest political scandal of this century? Have they already forgotten about Partygate?